Real Wedding: Lorraine and Promise’s Traditional Zimbabwean wedding

Dominic Whiten is a Kent based wedding photographer. He talks to us today, about photographing Lorraine and Promise’s colourful Zimbabwean wedding, in the beautiful spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells!

“I was originally approached by Lorraine right at the beginning of 2010, and after an initial phone conversation I just knew this was a wedding I really wanted to cover. Both Lorraine and Promise are originally from Zimbabwe and she explained that they planned to have a traditional English church wedding with a Zimbabwean flavour.

Lorraine lives in Tunbridge Wells, but Promise is an American citizen and based in Boston, so the planning and organising was left to Lorraine, who did a fantastic job!

Lorraine managed to postpone the entire day’s celebrations to the August bank holiday with Promise arriving at Heathrow with two days to spare!

However, the wedding wasn’t without the odd hitch… They’d originally planned to marry on August 21st but on arriving in the UK the week before, Promise found there was a problem with his visa and he had to fly back to the States. After many sleepless nights, Lorraine managed to postpone the entire day’s celebrations to the August bank holiday with Promise arriving at Heathrow with two days to spare!

Both the church and reception venue were able to accomodate the changes and from there on everything went ahead smoothly.

Nothing prepared me for the most amazing dance performed by Lorraine’s daughter and a group of her friends. They were so good, I had to double check that they weren’t a professional dance group!”

This was my first African wedding, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the day, but Lorraine had told me there would be a traditional wedding dance at the reception. “OK, that’s nice”, I thought, but nothing prepared me for the most amazing dance performed by Lorraine’s daughter and a group of her friends. They were so good, I had to double check that they weren’t a professional dance group!”